St. Petersburg Times "Action" column
February 9, 1995
I read in your Jan. 17 Action column that NBC officials said the
chimes used for network identification are the musical notes, G, E,
and C and originally stood for General Electric Company which was
part owner of NBC.
I think if you research this a little further you will find that the
chimes really originated in Atlanta, Ga., at radio station WSB.
In the late 1920s, WSB station manager Lambdin Kay began using a
miniature xylophone to hit those same three notes to signal station
breaks. Later, when WSB joined the NBC network, WSB cut in one day
during a Georgia Tech football game with the chimes. NBC liked it so
well that it got permission to use the chimes for its own
identification. --PAUL TERRY
RESPONSE: We were very sorry to learn that Paul Terry died two days
after phoning in the above message and a day after Action's
conversation with him. His wife Martha said he was happy to be able
to talk about his memories and looked forward to seeing his comments
in this column, so we'll go ahead with our response because we know
he would have approved.
We asked Terry how he knew so much about the history of the chimes.
Terry, 87, said he started hanging around radio station WSB when he
was 14 whenever he wasn't working (he had gotten a job with American
Telephone at age 12 and retired from that industry 52 years later).
Another young man who stopped at WSB on a regular basis, Perry said,
was Marcus Bartlett. Bartlett was working his way through college by
playing the background music for radio stories. Eventually, he
worked his way up to be manager of WSB and then vice president of Cox
Broadcasting.
Elmo Ellis who retired 10 years ago as general manager of station WSB
confirmed Terry's story.
"Bartlett hired me 50 year ago," Ellis said. "When I started in
1940, they still had a miniature device like a xylophone that had
three notes on it," he said. "The notes were struck to signal the
end of a program."
In the early days there was no Federal Communications Commission and
little regulation of radio, Ellis said, but there also were very few
radio stations. WSB, which went on the air in 1922, was, for a time,
the only station in the South. You could hear its signal for quite a
long distance, Ellis said. Stations would cooperate so their signals
would not interfere with each other.
Sometimes when WSB went off the air, the announcer would encourage
listeners to stay tuned for another station, such as KMOX in St.
Louis or to a station in Kansas City or Cincinnati, Ellis said. Then
the WSB chimes would ring three times to let listeners know it was
signing off.
The chimes would also let listeners know when the station staff was
going off the air for a dinner break or to make repairs. The staff
was small, and the equipment was primitive and fragile, Ellis said.
The tubes they used would overheat and sometimes blow out. In the
summertime the station engineers used ice to keep them cool.
According to Ellis, the president of NBC at the time radio station
WSB became an affiliate was Niles Trammel, a man who had been reared
in Atlanta and who grew up hearing the WSB chimes. Ellis said he was
sure that Trammel's familiarity with WSB had something to do with
NBC's decision to adopt the chimes as the network's identifying
symbol.
>Newsgroups: rec.antiques.radio+phono
>From: billhar@spaceworks.com (bill harris)
>Subject: NBC Chimes, a history of
>Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 05:40:47 GMT
>Organization: SpaceWorks, Inc.
A History of The NBC Chimes
I am sure that most, if not all of you collectors of vintage radios, have
heard the famous sound trademark of NBC, the three chimes. The announcer
would say, "this is the National Broadcasting Company," and then you would
hear the three note chime. I became interested in learning more about the
chimes when I discovered a book in the library titled "The Fourth Chime" by
NBC. I had never heard of a fourth chime so my curiosity was aroused. The
book, however did not tell much about the fourth chime, other than it was
used as an added fourth note to the three chimes to announce special news
bullitens, but dealt primarily with the role that NBC played in reporting
world events, mostly during World War II. I had to find out more about this
fourth chime. After writing several letters, making phone calls, and
inquires, I was able to gather the information I was seeking and even the
history of the chimes and how they came about. I hope you find it as
interesing as I did.
The NBC Chimes
America's first nation-wide network, the National Broadcasting Company,
began broadcasting on November 15, 1926, with WEAF in New York as the key
station, and ninteen affliate stations. The corporation was jointly owned by
RCA, General Electric, and Westinghouse.
There was some confusion amoung the stations at the conclusion of network
programs on the hour and half-hour and some type of coordinating signal was
needed to alert the network stations for station break purposes.
Three men at NBC were appointed the task of developing such a signal for
station identification on the hour and half-hour; Earnest la Prada, an
orchestra leader; Phillips Carlin, and NBC announcer; and Oscar Hanson, who
later became an NBC vice-president in charge of engineering. These three
experminted on the air with a complicated seven-note arrangement
(G-C-F-E-G-C-E) in 1927 and 1928. The announcers found that the seven-note
chimes were too complicated to remember to strike consistently in the
correct order so the number of notes was reduced to four (G-C-F-E) and that
was reduced to three notes. On November 29, 1929 the three notes (G-C-E)
that became the tradmark of NBC were broadcast. The chimes were struck at
29:30 and at 59:30 past the hour.
The chimes consisted of three note bars finely tuned to exact pitch, mounted
on a wood sound box with leather bumpers padding the ends. The bars were
mounted in striking order and the box had an aluminum handle on the side so
the announcer could hold it up to the microphone while striking the chimes.
Beninning in 1932 the chimes were generated automatically by means of finely
tuned metal reeds that were plucked by metal fingers mounted on a revolving
drum, much like a music box operates. The reeds formed part of a capacitor
in an oscillator circuit. The notes were amplified and then sent out to be
broadcast. Now all the announcer had to do to sound the chimes was push a
button.
The fourth chime was initiated to announce special news bullitens. It was
first used to announce the crash of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, NJ., in
1937, and used again during the Munich crisis in 1938, with the attack on
Pearl Harbor in 1941, and during the D-Day invasion. The fourth chime was a
second sounding of the note "C".
The chimes announced the beginning of NBC television broadcasting on April
1, 1941 with the sign-on of WNBT TV in NYC.
NBC registered the chimes with the U.S. Patent Office in 1950, the first
audiable trademark to be registered. Below is the discription as filed with
the Patent Office.
Serial Number: 72-349496
Type of Mark: Service Mark
Description of Mark: The mark comprises a sequence of chime-like musical
notes which are in the key of C and sound the notes G,
E, C, the "G" being the one just below middle C, the
"E" the one just above middle C and the "C" being
middle C, thereby to identify applicant's broadcasting
service.
Owmer Name: (registrant) National Broadcasting Company Inc., The
Owner Address: 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, New York
The chimes were discontinued on both radio and television on September 12,
1971, but in celebration of NBC's 50th anneversary, the chimes were once
again used following all broadcast from November 1976.
References:
The Chimes You Hear From Coast To Coast: A History Of The NBC Chimes, by
Rod Phillips, The Michigan Radio Chronicle, Vol. 6 #4, 1991.
The Fourth Chime, by the National Broadcasting Company
A Pictorial History of Radio, by Irving Settle
I am now trying to find a recording of the fourth chime. If any of you
collect recordings of old time radio programs and might have a recording
where the fourth chime was used I would like to hear from you.
Thanks,
Bill Harris